Soul Deep: Dark Souls, Book 2 (36 page)

He only hoped the angel wouldn’t sense his troops following them.

Cal was headed out the door to check on Marcus when Jace dropped by his office again. With a weary sigh, he returned to his desk and folded his body into the welcoming lap of his old leather chair. “What can I do for you, Jace?”

“I thought there might be a few things we need to clear up.” Jace ventured farther into the room, sitting across from Cal.

“Would this perchance have anything to do with you disobeying a direct order and resurrecting the catacombs?”

Jace shrugged noncommittally. “I just wanna make sure you understand that it was all my idea. Lia had nothing to do with it. I’d hate to see her punished for my actions.”

He should’ve figured any remorse Jace demonstrated would revolve around Lia. The man had absolutely no regard for the chain of command. The only thing he could be counted on was to do exactly what he wanted, when he wanted. Still, Cal felt an odd sense of respect for the guy. Perhaps he went about things the wrong way, but he always got the job done.

“You can rest easy, Jace. I have no intention of punishing anyone, not you and certainly not Lia. You brought Regan and Marcus back to me, alive. I’m grateful for that. And the catacombs will certainly come in handy in the future, as long as the Kleptopsychs don’t gain access to them.”

“I’ve closed all the entrances, for now. When you want me to open one, just say the word.”

Cal nodded, amazed that Jace had accomplished such a phenomenal task. “To think that the same power that once dwelled in Athanatos now dwells in you.”

“Any news on Marcus?” Jace asked, abruptly changing the subject. He hated being praised almost as much as he hated following orders.

“I was on my way to check on him when you dropped by.” A soft rap on the door interrupted their discussion. “Come in.”

Elliot, the Watcher Cal had sent to Marcus’s room earlier to retrieve his tattered clothing, shuffled in, holding a bloody piece of paper in his gloved hand. “Sorry to barge in,” he said, “but I found this in Marcus’s pants and thought you might want to take a look at it.”

Cal pulled a leather glove from his desk drawer and slipped in on before taking hold of the paper. Angel’s blood had absolutely no effect on him, but one had to keep up appearances. Doing his best to ignore Jace’s sardonic grin, he unfolded the bloody note and froze. The same six sentences had been penned in a frantic scrawl across the page, over and over again. The penmanship was one of a child, but the language was that of the angels.

“Thank you, Elliot. You can go now.” Cal couldn’t tear his eyes from the familiar symbols, unsure what to make of their meaning. If what he read was true, nothing was what he’d believed it to be.

Elliot nodded and quickly retreated from the room, leaving Cal alone with Jace.

“Something wrong? You look like you’ve just seen a ghost.” Jace gestured to the wrinkled piece of paper. “What does it say?”

Cal tossed the sheet on his desk and immediately rummaged through the top drawer, where he’d stored the Sacred Dagger Lillith had given him the first time she’d appeared to him.

The drawer was empty.

He closed his eyes, violently rubbed his lids with his thumb and forefinger to relieve the sudden pressure that had built there. “I was a fool. I never should’ve trusted her.”

“Who?”

“Lillith. She lied to me. And now she has in her possession the only weapon that can kill the boy’s soul.” Cal snorted in self-disgust. “The true irony is that all my efforts to avoid the Apocalypse may have just spurred it into existence.”

Jace leaned across the desk, his hands fisted over the worn surface, looking utterly lost. “Who the hell is Lillith?”

“An angel, one of my old lieutenants. She told me Ben was created to bring about another great flood, but the opposite is true. Ben’s purpose isn’t to end the world but to save it.”

Jace unclasped his hands and dug his fingers in his hair. “You really have to tell me what’s on that piece of paper, ’cause you’re not making one iota of sense right now.”

“It’s another prophecy.” Cal grabbed the note and proceeded to translate. “‘The Sacred Four shall be united. The first will free the fourth. The second will cut short the firstborn’s reign. The third will inspire hope and eliminate an enduring threat. The fourth shall banish the darkness and restore peace to a cursed world. If, however, one is lost or fails to perform its task, a great flood will come, and mankind shall be no more.’”

Jace blew out a whistle of air. “And I thought you were talking nonsense before.”

“The Sacred Four is a legend,” Cal explained. “Before he fell, Sataniel—or Satan as he is known today—forged a handful of souls. These souls possessed unimaginable power. They were the souls of wizards and seers, of prophets and healers. The bearers of such souls were indestructible, immune to illness, old age, even death itself.”

Cal remembered a time when life wasn’t finite as it was today, when humans lived for thousands of years and had the power to control their environment, to create matter out of thin air and turn lead into gold.

“After Sataniel fell, these souls were hunted down and eradicated with the help of the Sacred Dagger, the only weapon in existence capable of accomplishing the task. But four are rumored to have survived. Three were divided, mixed into the soul pool. Once separated, these extraordinary souls lost their power, making it impossible to distinguish them from the others.”
 

“What about the fourth? You said only three were divided.”

Cal’s heart turned to dust in his chest. “The fourth dwelled within Athanatos for thousands of years, until you set it free last summer.”

A light came into Jace’s eyes, followed by a spark of understanding. “‘The first will free the fourth’,” he rasped.

“Till now I thought the soul you and Lia share owed its formidable power to its archangel origins,” Cal said. “But now I see it’s more than that. It is one of the Sacred Four.”

“So you’re telling me I owe my soul to the devil? Wouldn’t that make me one hell of an evil bastard?”

Cal shook his head adamantly. “You must understand that Sataniel wasn’t always evil. He was an archangel, the most powerful one of all and God’s right hand. The souls he forged before he fell from grace are the polar opposite of what he later became. They are goodness and light and strength. And according to this newest prophecy, they are the only things in existence powerful enough to vanquish the darkness.”

Jace leaned back in his chair, his shoulders drooping. “And Ben? How does he figure in?”

“He’s the second of the Sacred Four. ‘The second shall cut short the firstborn’s reign’,” Cal reiterated, tossing a glance at the page on his desk.

“So the plan isn’t for him to empower Kyros,” Jace said. “It’s to take him out.”

“It appears so.”

Jace’s expression turned ominous. “Lia had to die for Athanatos to fall. Does the same hold true for Ben?”

“I can’t answer that question. But whatever Ben’s fate, we can’t intervene.” He met Jace’s worried stare with a hard one of his own. He wanted Jace to understand that they had to work together this time. There was no margin for error. “The prophecy clearly states that if Ben fails to fulfill his purpose, all of mankind will be wiped away.”

Jace released a short, bitter laugh. “Good luck getting Regan and Marcus to cooperate. There’s no way they’ll let the kid die without a fight.”

Cal closed his fingers around the prophetic sheet, crinkling the page at the corners. As hard as he tried to conceal it, his frustration was beginning to show. “That’s what I’m afraid of.”

Chapter Forty-Four

The blackness seemed alive, crawling and slithering, caressing Regan with ghostlike fingers. She scanned her surroundings, grateful she could see so well in the dark as she struggled to orient herself. “Where are we?”

She’d used her teleporting abilities to get them out of Marcus’s room without anyone noticing. She knew that Cal had posted a guard at the door, clear evidence that despite his promise of forgiveness he still didn’t trust them. Short of infusing her with angel’s blood or shackling her in copper, however, he had no way of preventing her from folding space.
 

“Looks like the basement.” Marcus walked ahead of her, shielding her with his wide body. His movements were labored, his complexion sallow, which made her wonder if he was up to this.

“Guess I overshot.” The goal had been to get them to the armory, where they could arm themselves in secret, before Cal realized Marcus had regained consciousness. Unfortunately, after the trying day she’d had, her aim was a little off.

Cal would be royally pissed when he found out what they’d done, but Regan had seen no other choice but to engage in a second act of mutiny. Cal was still determined to eliminate Ben, which made him as big a threat as Kyros and this famous angel of fate.

The Watchers rarely ventured into the basement, which was lined with interrogation rooms usually reserved for dangerous prisoners. It was in one of these stifling cells that they’d kept Kyros a few months ago when they’d apprehended him. Several interrogation rooms existed on the main floor as well, but those were used for Hybrids Cal was attempting to recruit or people the Watchers didn’t fear or wish to harm.

“I think the armory is right above us. Come on.” Marcus guided her around the corner toward a metal staircase. The Watchers’ complex was a vast facility, with numerous buildings interconnected by underground tunnels and several identical staircases leading to the floors above. The buildings were deceptively similar in look and layout, but Marcus seemed to know where he was going.

“Are you sure we’re in the right building?”

He nodded and kept plowing forward. “I’ve spent enough time down here to recognize the place.”

As Cal’s second-in-command, Marcus had the benefit of assisting in all of their interrogations. Regan, on the other hand, rarely ventured this far below ground.

They mounted the stairs as quietly as possible, listening intently for the sound of approaching footsteps. The complex was as silent as a grave, with half the Watchers scouring Spokane for a trace of Ben and the other half probably getting themselves psyched for battle.

The tight ball of anxiety in Regan’s chest loosened. Maybe they could pull this off. Maybe they could get out of the complex undetected and find Ben before Kyros broke him and stripped him of his soul. A soul forged by an archangel was harder to steal, especially when it was whole and had once belonged to a Hybrid. This knowledge provided a small measure of comfort, even as another undeniable truth circled her brain, threatening to undermine her confidence.
 

Ben was a child, which meant his essence was easier to break. She remembered the tattered doll she’d found in the catacombs last summer. In the antediluvian world, the Nephilim had kept prisoners locked away in dungeons deep below the ground. There was a reason they’d favored children even then.

After rounding several corners, they came to a tall metal door Regan recognized immediately. “The armory.”

Marcus’s feeble grin shone gray in the shadows. “Told you.”

He pried the heavy door open, and they entered the large metallic room, where an arsenal of blood-smeared blades lay suspended from a steel rack on the wall. Marcus hastened to one of the refrigeration units across the room and yanked the glass door open, grabbing several small vials of angel’s blood. When Regan drew near, he handed a couple of them to her. “Hurry. We don’t have much time.”

She quickly complied, placing the vials in her pocket.

Marcus headed over to the rack, where he selected a Scottish broadsword and slipped it into the scabbard he’d attached to his waist. Next he selected an old trench knife, a weapon that would prove handy in close-range combat.

Regan followed his lead, grabbing an Italian long sword, which she attempted to secure in her own scabbard. Metal clanged as the blade slid from her grasp and crashed to the ground. “Damn it.” She fell on her haunches to retrieve it, hoping no one had heard the racket she’d made.

“You all right?”

“Peachy.” She finally managed to sheathe her weapon.

When she stood, Marcus turned her to face him. “We’ll get through this,” he whispered. “One way or another.” The fatalistic tone in his voice unsettled her, despite the reassuring words he spoke.

“What exactly does that mean?”

He reached up and stroked her cheek with a tenderness that made tears throb behind her eyes. “It means I’m not going to let you go rogue. No matter what. And I need to know that if it comes to it, you’ll do the same for me.”

Regan understood what he implied, shook her head in denial. “I don’t want to have this conversation.”

“We have to be realistic, Regan. If things don’t turn out the way we want them to—”

“They will.”

“If they don’t and it looks like our souls are about to be compromised—”

She squeezed her lids shut. “Marcus, don’t.”

He selected a sharp dagger from the bloody arsenal of weapons, its tip painted a lethal red, the metal glimmering beneath the stark glare of the fluorescent lighting. Pressing the hilt into her palm, he waited for her to open her eyes so he could capture her gaze. “Promise me you won’t let me go rogue.”